BAKU, Azerbaijan, September 1. Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov outlined key priorities for further cooperation within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the SCO Heads of State Council meeting in Bishkek.
According to the press service of the Kyrgyz President, the meeting, chaired by Sadyr Japarov, focused on current international and regional issues, the further development of the organization, security, economic cooperation and cultural and humanitarian ties.
"President of the Kyrgyz Republic Sadyr Japarov today, September 1, in Bishkek, as chairman, opened the meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization," the statement said.
Sadyr Japarov stressed the importance of strengthening the SCO as a platform for equal partnership and emphasized that the organization should remain free from bloc thinking and confrontation.
“Our Organization should continue to remain free from bloc thinking and confrontation, and serve as a platform for strengthening trust and ensuring peace and stability,” he said.
The Kyrgyz president also highlighted the need to develop an effective and indivisible security system and called for the early launch of the SCO Universal Center for Countering Challenges and Threats to the Security of Member States.
He noted that all necessary conditions had been created in Bishkek to launch the SCO Center for Combating International Organized Crime.
Sadyr Japarov also called for a new quality of economic cooperation within the SCO, emphasizing the importance of practical progress toward establishing an SCO Development Bank.
He invited SCO member states and business communities to use the opportunities offered by the Tamchy Special Financial and Investment Territory, launched in July in Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul region, for implementing joint projects.
The Kyrgyz president further highlighted the importance of strengthening transport and logistics connectivity, pointing to the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project as a key practical step.
He also emphasized the importance of developing cultural and humanitarian cooperation and creating a common technological space within the SCO.
"It is important to ensure equal access of states to modern technologies so that digital inequality does not become a new dividing line," Sadyr Japarov said.
The summit was attended by the heads of state and government of SCO member countries, as well as SCO Secretary-General Nurlan Yermekbayev and Director of the Executive Committee of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure Ularbek Sharsheev.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Sadyr Japarov handed over the SCO chairmanship to Pakistan.
